Friday 5 August 2016

TAOSSA Chapter 9

Ch 9. Unix I: Privileges and objects

Unix 101; users, groups and processes; setuid and setgid binaries
Effective UID, real UID, saved set-UID.
Daemons and their children - all 3 IDs are 0 for “root” daemons

UID functions

  • seteuid(). Change the effective user ID associated with the process If a process is running with superuser privileges (effective user ID of 0), it can set the effective user ID to any arbitrary ID. Otherwise, for non-root processes, it can toggle the effective user ID between the saved set-user-ID and the real user ID
  • setuid(). Changes all 3 UIDs, is used for permanently assuming the role of a user, usually for the purposes of dropping privileges
  • setresuid(). Explicitly set all 3 UIDs. “-1” is used for “keep the same”. Non super-user can set any of the 3 to a value of any currently assigned 3 UIDs. Super-user - to any value.
  • setreuid(). Set real UID and effective UID, similar to setresuid. More important on Solaris and older BSDs who don’t have setresuid
Before OpenBSD imported the setresuid() function and rewrote the setreuid() function, the only straightforward way for a nonprivileged program to clear the saved set-user-ID was to call thesetuid() function when the effective user ID is set to the real user ID. This can be accomplished by calling setuid(getuid()) twice in a row.

Group ID functions

  • setegid()
  • setgid()
  • setresgid()
  • setregid()
  • setgroups(). Set supplementary groups by the process. Can only be performed by a process with an effective UID 0
  • initgroups(). Set supplementary groups from specified username and add another group. Same, requires EUID 0

Privilege vulnerabilities

A program can drop its root privileges by performing a setuid(getuid()), which sets the saved set-user-ID, the real user ID, and the effective user ID to the value of the real user ID.
A setgid+setuid program can drop root privileges: (order important)
/* drop root privs - correct order */
setgid(getgid());
setuid(getuid());
If the order is reversed, in Linux, Solaris, and OpenBSD, only the effective group ID is modified, and the saved set-group-ID still contains the group ID of the privileged group.
Same pair of calls for non-root prigs only changes effective IDs, not the saved IDs (in FreeBSD and NetBSD all three IDs are changed)
A similar case is when privileges are temporarily dropped and then setuid is called from while under non-0 (root) user. In most implementations this does not affect saved user ID and root privileges can be recovered by using seteuid(0)
Another situation - incorrect attempts to drop privileges temporarily
The book has a couple of pages of checklists for auditing privilege-management code
  • setgroups() works only when running with euid 0
  • Attempting to drop privileges while not running with euid 0 will not work
  • Using setegid() or seteuid() to drop root privileges is a mistake
  • Privileged groups and supplemental groups must be dropped before the process gives up its effective user ID of root
  • *setgid(getgid()) for non-root leaves saved UID set to a privileged user
For temporary dropping of privileges:
  • Make sure the code drops any relevant group permissions as well as supplemental group permissions.
  • Make sure the code drops group permissions before user permissions.
  • Make sure the code restores privileges before attempting to drop privileges again, either temporarily or permanently.

File security

File IDs

The kernel sets the file’s owner and group when the file is first created. The owner is always set to the effective user ID of the process that created the file.
There are two common schemes by which the group ID can be initialised.
  1. BSD-based systems tend to set the initial group ID to the group ID of the file’s parent directory.
  2. The System V and Linux approach is to set the group ID to the effective group ID of the creating process.

File permissions

The four components of the permission bitmask are owner permissions, group permissions, other permissions, and a set of special flags.
The kernel looks only at the most specific set of permissions relevant to a given user. It’s a common misunderstanding to think that the less specific permission bits are consulted if the more specific permissions prevent an action.
The three special permission bits are the setuid bit, the setgid bit, and the sticky (or tacky) bit.

Umask

To calculate the initial permission bits for a new file, the permission argument (mode) of the file creation system call is calculated with a bitwise AND operation with the complement of the umask value.
Umask is inherited by the new program; default umask is usually 022

Directory permissions

Slightly different meaning of permissions bits. Read - list contents, write - modify contents of directory - create, delete rename files. Execute - search permission, you need it to access any files or subdirectories. Read permissions work w/o search, write usually require search permissions.

Privilege management with file operations

File opening is typically done with the open(), creat(), mknod(), mkdir(), or socket() system calls; a file’s directory is altered with calls such as unlink() and rename(); and file attributes are changed with calls such as chmod(), chown(), or utimes(). All these privilege checks consider a file’s permission bitmask, ownership, and group membership along with the effective user ID, effective group ID, and supplemental groups of the process attempting the action. Effective permissions of the process are critical.
Sources of issues with file permissions:
  • Recklessness with permissions
  • Libraries doing stuff in the background
  • Permissions when creating files
    • Unix open() interface, specific mode and its umask interaction
    • Forgetting O_EXCL (if open() is called with O_CREAT but not O_EXCL, the system might open an existing file instead of creating a new one)
    • setuid root files created but the less privileged users
  • Directory safety (who owns the directory the file is in, who can write to it). All parents in the path must be safe.
  • Filenames and paths: absolute and relative; special entries. Every time you use a system call that takes a pathname, the kernel goes through the process of stepping through each directory to locate the file. For the kernel to follow a path, you must have search permissions on every directory in that path.
    • Pathname tricks, dir traversal
    • Embedded NUL
    • Dangerous dirs

File internals

  • File descriptor
  • File descriptor table
  • Inodes
  • Directories
  • Links - symlinks, hard links

Race conditions

Race conditions are situations in which two different parties simultaneously try to operate on the same resource with deleterious consequences.
For UNIX file system code, these issues usually occur when you have a process that gets preempted or enters a blocking system call at an inopportune moment. This moment is typically somewhere in the middle of a sensitive multiple-step operation involving file and directory manipulation. If another process wins the race and gets scheduled at the right time in the middle of this “window of inopportunity,” it can often subvert a vulnerable nonatomic sequence of file operations and wrest privileges from the application.

Stat() family of functions

stat(), fstat(), lstat()
fstat() is the most resilient in terms of race conditions, as it’s operating on a previously opened file
lstat() does not follow links, stat() does
Standard protection against link-based attacks is to use lstat() on a requested filename and either explicitly check it’s a link or check it’s a file and fail when it’s not
Beware of TOCTOU issues in the above scenario
Possible to delete or rename links when files are open. The kernel does not care if the file that fd indexes has been deleted or renamed. As long as the file descriptor is kept open, the file and corresponding in ode in the file system stay available. This can be used when the program checks after opening the file

Recap and other races

Most file system race conditions can be traced back to using system calls that work with pathnames
Permissions are established by how the file is opened and security checks at that time, so changing permissions will not affect access
Anything besides a single file-based sys call to open a resource followed by multiple file-descriptor based calls has a chance of a race condition
Evading file access checks: Another vulnerability pattern - security check function uses a filename followed by a usage function that uses a filename
Permission races: an app temporarily exposes a file to modification for a short window of time by creating it with insufficient permissions
If attackers can open the file during that window, they retain access even after permissions have been corrected
Ownership races: File is created with the effective privileges of a non privileged user, then later file owner is changed to that of a privileged user. If attackers open the file between open() andfchown(), they get a fd with access mask permitting read and write to the file
Directory races: If a program descends into user-controllable directors, user can move directories around and cause the program to operate on sensitive files

Temporary files

Temp directors are marked as sticky directories with mode octal 1777

Unique file creation

mktemp() generates very easily predictable unique name, based on process ID of the caller plus a static pattern
This can be used in race condition scenarios
tmpnam() and tempnam() have same race condition issues as mktemp()
mkstemp() much safer if used correctly
tmpfile() and mkdtemp() - safe functions

File reuse

Applications also might have a requirement to open temporary files that already exist in a temporary directory. Opening these files is difficult.
Preventing opening soft or hard links is difficult.
Cryogenic sleep attack - sending a job control signal such as SIGSTOP to the application at the right moment then manipulating files. Possible if the program is a setuid root program users had started in their terminal session

STDIO file interface

UNIX application code commonly uses stdio in lieu of the lower-level system call API because it automatically implements buffering and a few convenience functions for data formatting.
A typical FILE structure contains a pointer to buffered file data (if it’s a buffered stream), the file descriptor, and flags related to how the stream is opened.
fopen() is used for opening files. Same potential problems as open(). If the implementation does not take a mask as a parameter, it applies default mask of 0666 then fighter restricts permissions based on umask of the current process. In a privileged context, it should be used very carefully.
freopen() has the same problems,
fdopen() does not.
fread() similar to read() but reads a specified number of params of specified size. Multiplication is involved, potential for integer overflow. fgets() reads a single line from the file. Potential problems: ignoring the return value - if it returns NULL, contents of the destination buffer are unspecified. Another one: when the file containing user-controlled data is incorrectly parsed (because fgets reads up to x chars but not the whole line).
fscanf() reads data of a specified format directly into vars. Potential for buffer overflows when using this function to read in string values. Also need to check the return value.
With writing to a file there are more limitations for users to affect the application, because the data being manipulated is already in memory. Much fewer security implications of writing it into a file.
Potential format string vulnerabilities for printf family; users messing with file format
fclose() - if called twice on a FILE structure a double free() would occur, with a possibility of corrupting the heap.
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